I organized and zipped up my massive Shadowrun playlist a few months back, and then never got around to uploading them. I've been trying to clear some space up, though, so here they are, at long last - it's a mix of techno, industrial, and synthpop, largely. Each zip is ~75 MB or so - I split them up alphabetically to make the file sizes a little smaller. Playlist and files past the cut.

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Okay, so it was thundering like fifteen minutes ago, and now it's <b>snowing</b>. Vancouver weather is so weird sometimes.

I want to make it a long rant, but it is already far, far too late to still be awake, so brief will have to do. I have an acquaintance. We shall call him J, because he's a privacy freak (and this is coming from me, a singularly cautious and paranoid individual) - people from the club will probably know who I'm talking about. J is, in short, an arrogant, judgmental asswipe, who is convinced that he is 1) God's gift to the ladies, and 2) The Shit. He is neither. He has managed to earn the animosity of almost everyone who has to deal with him, and I swear to god, if  he says 'That's such a chick thing to do' to me again, I will hurt him. Because god forbid I want to actually get to know people on the internet (or in this case, in WoW), and use LJ to do so, which is apparently only women do.

Unrelated, but on a similar vein, there is really no good way to tell a friend that you would rather go into the wilderness and gouge your eyes out with blackened sticks than deal with his girlfriend. Because I really would, as said girlfriend is the bitchy, whiny, passive-aggressive, 'I'm a girl on the internet so I'm special, pay attention to me' female version of the aforementioned J. I've settled on trying to avoid her as much as humanly possible, both online and off, but Christ, does she piss me off.

Because I am a nerd, and feel like nattering on about RPGs of both the tabletop and PC variety. Although mostly the tabletop variety, because ED blood elves >>> WoW blood elves, and I feel like telling you why. WoW blood elves changed their name to blood elves because 1) a bunch of them died and 2) they lost the source of awesome magical power they were all addicted to. Now they sit around being vaguely arrogant and evil and making deals with demons. In Earthdawn, the blood elves are called that because they are literally bleeding, all the time. Why? Because they have thorns growing out from underneath their skin. Why? Because it kept them from having their souls eaten by extraplanar monsters.

Okay, storytime - a couple hundred years ago in the Earthdawn timeline, historians digging through the old records discovered that due to the rise and fall of magic in the world, they were due to be invaded by aforementioned big nasty extraplanar monsters, called Horrors. They also figured out a way of hiding from the Horrors, which mostly involved building cities underground and magically sealing them off until the Horrors left again. The elven court, however, being the arrogant SoBs they are, went 'Bah, we can do better than that! We're elves!'. They decided to magically alter their forest, the Wyrm Wood, to form a barrier to protect them. This worked for a while, but as the invasion grew stronger, the barriers started failing. However, the elves realized that while Horrors fed on Namegiver pain and misery, they could only feed on pain and misery they caused themselves - they couldn't feed on elves who were already miserable and full of pain. The elves' brilliant idea? Fuse their souls with those of thorny plant spirits, so they are in excruciating pain all the time. This actually worked, but the blood magic they used to accomplish this seriously warped both them, and their forest (anyone who's read the Coldfire Trilogy - the Hunter's forest? Yeah, it's pretty much like that). So, end result is that the Elven Court is badass and totally fucking crazy, which leaves most of the rest of the elves with some serious complexes - 'We have to honor them! They're the Court! But they're all insane! What do we do?!'.

Our Earthdawn game has been getting pretty epic lately, although I have the sinking suspicion we may wipe next session. We got involved in a slum turf-war while on our way to break two people (former party members) out of imperial prison. Unfortunately, it turns out that there are much larger forces at play than just a simple turf war, and we ended last session with the warren town we were protecting being surrounded by about three hundred city troops. Three of us are evacuating the town via a secret access to the sewer system, while the Swordmaster is about to engage in a duel to buy us time, and the archer is staying behind to back him up - they're almost certainly dead (although Isak now has a great deal more respect for the Swordmaster for facing death honorably, without fear - one of the big things for Nethermancers is to never be afraid, particularly of death). As for the rest of us - well, Isak has probably been Horror-marked due to raw-casting to keep from drowning (we escaped into the river, forgetting that none of us can swim), and this will probably end nastily.

Man, I love Earthdawn. I know I blather endlessly about Shadowrun because I &hearts; cyberpunk, but Earthdawn, honestly, is a stronger, better fleshed-out system.

1) I am sick of being sick. Sinus infections (which I'm fairly certain I have) suck.

2) I have started the job hunt anew, because I'm sick of traveling an hour each way to sell overpriced produce to bitchy rich people. Particularly when a few of the staff I like have quit or been fired. So I went by the mall today, filled out an application for Chapters, dropped off resumes at both EB Games (selling my soul, I know) and Lush, and learned that Best Buy and Futureshop do all their applications online. So I'll see what comes of it.

3) I bought more Transmetropolitan while I was at it, because Warren Ellis has made me into a corporate whore. It's so good, though.

4) Have begun cleaning up the garden out back - it's a mess, though, so it's a little daunting. Updates to follow when I actually get somewhere.

5) I really love Moon Guard - I made an alt there, because I'm insane and decided I wanted to try WoW RP, and it's apparently <em>the</em> RP server. And it's really refreshing, because I can actually leave Trade on with out wanting to murder people. The stupidity level seems amazingly low.

So, last week was not a good week for computers around here - Jon managed to get some sort of boot-sector virus on his PC, and in the process of trying to remove it, managed to fry his master boot record - any advice from the technically inclined here? He's got a new HD and reinstalled the OS (XP Pro), but the computer won't recognize the old HD as actually existing, so we have no idea how to fix it.

Oh, and then I spilled pineapple juice all over my laptop. Dead serious. Thank god it's a Thinkpad - the keyboard took the brunt of the spill, and everything is working pretty much as intended (I'm using it right now), although half the keys are now slightly sticky, and smell of pineapple. Such is life - hopefully with enough acquired dust in the keyboard, the stickiness will go away.

I also bought a ton of stuff over the last two days - I've decided to clean up and re-plant the garden in the back yard, because I love fresh veggies and it's a mess right now, so I bought a bunch of gardening supplies. I also finally bought a wireless doorbell (there are four doors between outside and my living room, so I don't hear knocks), and a water filter pitcher. I also went out yesterday and splurged, and bought three more volumes of Transmetropolitan, because this comic is amazing.

The weather has been nicer lately - still cold for spring, particularly out here, but it's bright and sunny out, and it's finally taking the edge off the anger and depression I've been feeling for the last few weeks. So that's good. I sat in the sun and chatted with Rosie and Julie for a while this morning, and that was good. Hopefully I can get things back on track now.